Downsized Into Unemployment

I was having a beer with two friends last week. We all worked for the same company a number of years ago. Rob, was a consultant that I had hired; however Mike and I were employees for this large, well known telecommunications company.

Rob, being a consultant has adapted to the ups and downs of IT consulting. He is resourceful and his skills broad. Consulting is hard-wired into his soul. Mike and I were caught in a losing battle to keep our internal consulting organization viable.

The CIO was new and so were we. We had only worked for the company for less than a year before the Trade Towers fell and the telecommunication industry was about to be hit by the 9 billion dollar blow caused by Mr. Ebbers, the guy who ran and sunk Worldcom.

Mr. Ebbers is in jail now, it has been five years since 9/11, and four years since I first learned that our new 22 million dollar office was going to close. I had many software developers that were going to lose their jobs in a matter of months. It was just a little before Christmas; perfect timing.

Since I was in management I saw the handwriting on the wall about 8 months before the final decision was made. I traveled to the corporate headquarters trying to make our group more financially attractive to the company, particularly to the CIO. He didn’t like our new center. It was like a fly on his back; another thing he had to constantly deal with.

Our office was hundreds of miles from the corporate office and the silos and kingdoms were strong. It was hard to gain any traction and make our group relevant. We had talented people. They came from all over the country, many from India and China. When the words “workforce reduction” echoed throughout the office that December, it became a place of somber expressions and internalized pain. I could see the fear in the eyes of the guys that had an H1B visa to work in this country. They had to become employed in ten days or they would receive a one way plane ticket back to their home country. Their dream of becoming a citizen seemed all but lost.

The good news is that we helped the H1B visa employees find other jobs. I do not know of a single software developer that had to leave the country immediately. Some chose to leave on their own volition months after. We were in the post “dot com bubble” period. Jobs were scarce and salaries were dropping after increasing on the average of 11% a year.

Mike, my ex-co-worker at the local Irish pub looked at me with that same expression I had seen on so many faces of the employees who were losing their jobs years ago. He said, “You know, Eric, I am still not over that experience of losing my job.”

“Really?” I said. I was a bit surprised. He has a good job at a large Health Care company.

“Yeah” Mike continued. “My company is going through a merger and.. well I am not sure if my job is going to survive. I don’t want to go through that experience again.”

I understood Mike’s pain. The fear of losing your job in corporate America is a constant unconscious emotion. There is no job security. It is just a fact of life in the 21st century. Gone are the days of employee and employer loyalty. We all work “at will” knowing we can leave or lose our jobs at any time.

Corporate downsizing or rightsizing is a part of our corporate life. Mike is tired of the cycle of being the victim of the latest downsizing. His job is might be traded for better stock performance for the investors. It is reality.

It is something that continues to drive me towards passive income and alternate streams of income. Ulitmately, being in control of our own destiny is a place that we all need to be.